In Poland, 31% of the stable population is employed and the unemployment rate stands at more than 10%, while in Italy, where the percentage of employed people is lower, 28% of the total population, unemployment exceeds 12%, according to the data centralized by ZF based on the 2013 figures published by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Commission.
What is the explanation for the low unemployment in Romania, which numbers just 700,000 jobless people, considering 2.6 million people who are fit for work are not registered as either unemployed or employees?
“The crisis made many people stop looking for work, so they are no longer registered in the employee category, and also not registered as unemployed, either, which according to the definition are looking for a job, hence the low unemployment in statistics,” says economic analyst Aurelian Dochia, manager of Concept Economic and Business Consulting.
“Those statistics are deceiving, the unemployment rate is low because many people work in subsistence farming, barely making ends meet, they work a plot of land or in their own garden. At this rate, with people staying home because they have nowhere to work, it looks like we’re going back to the Middle Ages.”
The National Statistics Institute, the institution that calculates these figures according to the international standards and reports them to the Eurostat, explains that there are about three million people part of the active population falling into various categories: employers (therefore not salaried employees), sole traders or farmers.
“Those who are registered as unemployed and not collecting benefits are removed from the unemployed register after six months if they do not go to the unemployment agency at least once,” the National Statistics Institute told ZF.
Romania is an economic anomaly to which every government turns a blind eye for the sake of social peace: 3 million people legally employed by the private sector pay taxes that go towards the salaries of 1.2 million public sector employees, the pensions of more than 5 million retired people and all sorts of welfare. On top of that, the average wage in the public sector is higher than the average wage in the private sector.
The publication of the first quarter Household Labor Force Survey by the National Statistics Institute this week brought up again the inverted pyramid structure of the Romanian economy. Out of a population of 20 million people, 9 million are fit for work but the number of those legally employed stands at a little more than 4 million, with a further 2 million part of the informal economy and not paying any pension, healthcare or unemployment contributions.
Besides them, about three million are part of the active population falling into various categories like employers (therefore not salaried employees), sole traders or farmers, said Bogdan Hossu, leader of the National Trade Union Confederation “Cartel ALFA”.
“The unemployment rate is a statistical trap as the definition is not really well understood and there is a quite a gap between the extent of the lack of jobs phenomenon and the relatively low number of unemployed registered,” Hossu added.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)